Wall Poem Booklet

8/3/2019 Wall Poem Booklet

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WALLSPOEMS ABOUT

105

fencesbordersedgeslimits

facadesboundaries


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Outwittedby Edwin Markham

He drew a circle that shut me out

Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.

But Love and I had the wit to win:

We drew a circle that took him in!

Come to the Edgeby Christopher Logue

Come to the edge.

We might fall.

Come to the edge.

Its too high!

COME TO THE EDGE!

And they came,

and he pushed,

and they flew.

To Althea, From Prison(last stanza)

by Richard Lovelace

Stone walls do not a prison make,

Nor iron bars a cage;

Minds innocent and quiet take

That for an hermitage;

If I have freedom in my love,

And in my soul am free,

Angels alone that soar above

Enjoy such liberty.


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The Mark on the Wallby Henia Karmel

Praxia Dymitruk, Praxia, Praxia

why did you write your name all over the walls?

Is this pain written down

or resistance to lifes passing?Were you, too, afraid to disappear?

Without a sound? No one to miss you

because you belonged to no one?

Is your name all you owned, Praxia?

I understand you, little Russian one.

Such a sweet stem of a name.

For a girl so familiar though never known.

Praxia Dymitruk, Praxia, Praxia.

At the Wailing Wallby Jacqueline Osherow

I figure I have to come here with my kids,

though Im always ill at ease in holy places

the wars, for one thingand its the substanceless

that sets me going: the holy words....

Though I do write a notemy girls sound future

(theres an evil eye out there; you never know)

and then pick up a broken-backed siddur,the first of many motions to go through.

Lets get them over with. I hate this womens section

almost as much as that one full of men ...

Atmosphereby Robert Frost

Inscription for a Garden Wall

Winds blow the open grassy places bleak;

But where this old wall burns a sunny cheek,

They eddy over it too toppling weak

To blow the earth or anything self-clear;

Moisture and color and odor thicken here.

The hours of daylight gather atmosphere.


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Cross That Lineby Naomi Shihab Nye

Paul Robeson stood

on the northern border of the USA

and sang into Canada

where a vast audiencesat on folding chairs

waiting to hear him.

He sang into Canada.

His voice left the USA

when his body was not allowed

to cross that line.

Remind us again, brave friend!

What countries may we sing into?

What lines should we all be crossing?What songs travel toward us

from far away

to deepen our days?

A Fenceby Carl Sandburg

Now the stone house on the lake front is finishedand the workmen are beginning the fence.

The palings are made of iron bars with steel points

that can stab the life out of any man who falls on them.

As a fence, it is a masterpiece, and will shut off the rabble

and all vagabonds and hungry men

and all wandering children looking for a place to play.

Passing through the bars and over the steel points

will go nothing except Death and the Rain and

Tomorrow.


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Flower in the Crannied Wallby Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Flower in the crannied wall,

I pluck you out of the crannies,

I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,

Little flowerbut if I could understandWhat you are, root and all, all in all,

I should know what God and man is.

Over the Fenceby Emily Dickinson

Over the fence

Strawberries grow

Over the fence

I could climb if I tried, I know

Berries are nice!

But if I stained my Apron

God would certainly scold!

Oh, dear, I guess if He were a Boy

Hed climb if He could!

Sonnet 8by John Milton

Captain or Colonel, or Knight in Arms,

Whose chance on these defenceless dores may sease,

If ever deed of honour did thee please,

Guard them, and him within protect from harms,

He can requite thee, for he knows the charms [ 5 ]

That call Fame on such gentle acts as these,

And he can spred thy Name ore Lands and Seas,

What ever clime the Suns bright circle warms.

Lift not thy spear against the Muses Bowre,

The great Emathian Conqueror bid spare [ 10 ]

The house of Pindarus, when Temple and Towre

Went to the ground: and the repeated air

Of sad Electras Poet had the power

To save th Athenian Walls from ruine bare.


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Mending Wallby Robert Frost

Something there is that doesnt love a wall,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun;

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.The work of hunters is another thing:

I have come after them and made repair

Where they have left not one stone on a stone,

But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,

To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,

No one has seen them made or heard them made,

But at spring mending-time we find them there.

I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;

And on a day we meet to walk the line

And set the wall between us once again.

We keep the wall between us as we go.To each the boulders that have fallen to each.

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls

We have to use a spell to make them balance:

Stay where you are until our backs are turned!

We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,

One on a side. It comes to little more:

There where it is we do not need the wall:

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, Good fences make good neighbors.

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a notion in his head:

Why do they make good neighbors? Isnt it

Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.

Before I built a wall Id ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offense.

Something there is that doesnt love a wall,

That wants it down. I could say Elves to him,But its not elves exactly, and Id rather

He said it for himself. I see him there

Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top

In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me,

Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

He will not go behind his fathers saying,

And he likes having thought of it so well

He says again, Good fences make good neighbors.


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Retaining Wallby Henry Hughes

Will it hold-

the terrace wall and willows-

when the planet melts

just in timefor our retirement?

Is it enough to back-fill

with crossword puzzles,

contract bridge and Chinese for Beginners?

If the sky blackens and pours,

and the hill slides

mud, toys and matted pets,

lawn furniture, garbage cans,

and that neat shedwhere I keep the mower and a few ideas,

can we hang on? Anti-oxidants, fish oil, yoga.

Is it enough? Sentences tangling

such a soft mound of mind.

What will it take, my dear, to stay off the slope

where nobody remembers? That spotted yellow bed

and washed-out gully

where we always see the bones

of something smaller.


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The Wall Betweenby Katherine Tynan

The wall between is grown so thin

That whoso peers may see

A flutter of rose, a living green

Like new leaves on a tree.

The walls now gotten many a chink

Where whoso leans may hear

The feet of them who pass to drink

All at a well clear.

The people go, the people flow

Tother side o the wall

With silken rustle and laughter low

As to a festival.

Come mother and wife and piteous bride,

The walls nigh broken through;

And there be some the other side

That peep and pry for you.

So thin has grown, like a precious stone,

The wall no eye might pass,

You may have vision of your own

As through a crystal glass.

And if that sight should you delight

Your tears will all be dried,

For souls so bright that walk in white

Dear bliss on the other side.


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Trumereiby Phillip Larkin

In this dream that dogs me I am part

Of a silent crowd walking under a wall,

Leaving a football match, perhaps, or a pit,

All moving the same way. After a while

A second wall closes on our right,

Pressing us tighter. We are now shut in

Like pigs down a concrete passage. When I lift

My head, I see the walls have killed the sun,

And light is cold. Now a giant whitewashed D

Comes on the second wall, but much too high

For them to recognise: I await the E,

Watch it approach and pass. By now

We have ceased walking and travel

Like water through sewers, steeply, despiteThe tread that goes on ringing like an anvil

Under the striding A. I crook

My arm to shield my face, for we must pass

Beneath the huge, decapitated cross,

White on the wall, the T, and I cannot halt

The tread, the beat of it, it is my own heart,

The walls of my room rise, it is still night,

I have woken again before the word was spelt.

Dungeonby Rabindranath Tagore

He whom I enclose with my name is weeping in this dungeon.

I am ever busy building this wall all around; and as this wall goes

up into

the sky day by day I lose sight of my true being in its dark

shadow.

I take pride in this great wall, and I plaster it with dust and

sand

lest a least hole should be left in this name;

and for all the care I take I lose sight of my true being.


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The Whitewashed Wallby Thomas Hardy

Why does she turn in that shy soft way

Whenever she stirs the fire,

And kiss to the chimney-corner wall,

As if entranced to admireIts whitewashed bareness more than the sight

Of a rose in richest green?

I have known her long, but this raptured rite

I never before have seen.

- Well, once when her son cast his shadow there,

A friend took a pencil and drew him

Upon that flame-lit wall. And the lines

Had a lifelike semblance to him.

And there long stayed his familiar look;

But one day, ere she knew,The whitener came to cleanse the nook,

And covered the face from view.

Yes, he said: My brush goes on with a rush,

And the draught is buried under;

When you have to whiten old cots and brighten,

What else can you do, I wonder?

But she knows hes there. And when she yearns

For him, deep in the labouring night,

She sees him as close at hand, and turns

To him under his sheet of white.


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At the Edge of Townby Don Welch

Hard to know which is more gnarled,

the posts he hammers staples into

or the blue hummocks which run

across his hands like molehills.

Work has reduced his wrists

to bones, cut out of him

the easy flesh and brought him

down to this, the crowbars teeth

caught just behind a barb.

Again this morning

the crowbars neck will make

its blue slip into wood,

there will be that moment

when too much strength

will cause the wire to break.

But even at 70, he says,

he has to have it right,

and more than right.

This morning, in the pewter light,

he has the scars to prove it.


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As I Grew Olderby Langston Hughes

It was a long time ago.

I have almost forgotten my dream.

But it was there then,

In front of me,

Bright like a sun--

My dream.

And then the wall rose,

Rose slowly,

Slowly,

Between me and my dream.

Rose until it touched the sky--

The wall.

Shadow.

I am black.

I lie down in the shadow.No longer the light of my dream before me,

Above me.

Only the thick wall.

Only the shadow.

My hands!

My dark hands!

Break through the wall!

Find my dream!

Help me to shatter this darkness,

To smash this night,

To break this shadow

Into a thousand lights of sun,

Into a thousand whirling dreams

Of sun!


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Great Wallby Adam Sass

On this side, ruled lines,

Rivers bridged, terraced fields,

Lintels and windows,

Roads leading to other roadsAnd those to highways

That led to the capital.

On the other, shifting dunes,

Tracks of horses,

Wild game slain by wilder men:

Ibex, pheasant, hare.

Mounted riders glimpsed on distant ridges,

Watching, wheeling, gone.

A land whose maps dwelt only in memoryBut for those rare nights when,

Sketched by firelight in sand or cinders,

They took earthly form,

Revealed their contours to new eyes,

And scattered with mornings wind.

Now one who stood atop the wall wondered

Had it all been this way before its building -

The two landscapes growing

Ever more strange to each other,

Like brothers raised in separate houses,

Or had the coming of the wall made it so?

And who alive could even

Recall the answer,

Resurrect it from its

Tomb of time?

Surely none he knew,

Or would ever know.

Such questions were not worth the asking,He concluded, stretching himself for slumber

In the high guardhouse that sat astride the wall,

The two lands recumbent on either side.

But still he found the question circled him warily,

A gaunt stray skulking at camps edge.

When he finally slept, he dreamt of wild horses.


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The Garden Wallby Denise Levertov

Bricks of the wall,

so much older than the house

taken I think from a farm pulled down

when the street was built -

narrow bricks of another century.

Modestly, though laid with panels and parapets,

a wall behind the flowers -

roses and hollyhocks, the silver

pods of lupine, sweet-tasting

phlox, gray

lavender

unnoticed

but I discovered

the colors in the wall that wokewhen spray from the hose

played on its pocks and warts -

a hazy red, a

grain gold, a mauve

of small shadows, sprung

from the quiet dry brown

archetype

of the world always a step

beyond the world, that cant

be looked for, only

as the eye wanders,

found.


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Fenceby Douglas Alexander Stewart

Fence must be looked at; fence is too much neglected;

Most ancient indeed is fence; but it is not merely

White ants and weathers ravage must be inspected,

The broken paling where we can see too clearlyThe neighbours at their affairs, that larger hole

Where Hogans terrier ate it, or very nearly;

But fence most quintessential, fence in its soul.

For fence is defensa, Latin; fence is old Roman

And heaven knows what wild tribes, rude and unknown,

It sprang from first, when man took shelter with his woman;

Fence is no simple screen where Hogan may prune

His roses decently hidden by paling or lattice

Or sporting together some sunny afternoon

Be noticed with Mrs Hogan at nymphs and satyrs;

But fence is earthwork, defensa; connected no doubt

With fossa, a moat; straight from the verb to defend;

Therefore ward off, repel, stand guard on the moat;

None climbs this fence but cat or Hogans friend.

Fence is of spears and brambles; fence is defiance

To sabre-toothed tigers, to all the world in the end,

And there behind it the Hogans stand like lions.

It is not wise to meet the Hogans in quarrel,

They have a lawyer and he will issue writs;

Thieves and trespassers enter at deadly peril,

The brave dog bites the postman where he sits.

Just as they turn the hose against the summers

Glare on the garden, so in far fiercer jets

Here they unleash the Hogans against all comers.

True it is not very often the need arises

And they are peaceable people behind their barrier;

But something is here that must be saved in a crisis,

They know it well and so does the sharp-toothed terrier.

They bring him bones, he worships them deeply and dankly,

He thinks Mrs Hogan a queen and Hogan a warrior,

Most excellent people, and they agree with him, frankly.

The world, they feel, needs Hogans; they can contribute

To its dull pattern all their rich singularity;

And if, as is true, it pays them no proper tribute,

Hogans from Hogans at least shall not lack charity.

Shielded by fences are they not free to cherish


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Each bud, each shoot, each fine particularity

Which in the Hogans burgeons and must not perish?

It is not just that their mighty motor mower

Roars loudest for miles and chops up the insolent grass,

Nor that the Iceland poppies are dancing in flower,

Nor the new car all shiny with chromium and glass,

Nor the fridge and T.V., nor that, the bloom of their totem,

Their freckled children always come first in the class

Or sometimes at least, and never are seen at the bottom;

It is all this and so much more beside

Of Hogans down the ages in their proud carriage

And Hogan young and Mrs Hogan a bride

And napkins washed and babies fumbling their porridge,

Things which no prying stranger can know or feel

All locked in the strange intimacy of marriage,

Which by all means let decent fences conceal.

So let us to work, good neighbour, this Saturday morning,

Nail up the paling so Hogans are free to be Hogans

And Stewarts be Stewarts and no one shall watch us scorning

And no one break in with bullets and bombs and slogans

Or we will stand guard at the fence and fight as we can.

World is against us, but world has had its warning;

Deep out of time is fence and deep is man.


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Fence on the Borderby Sheryl Luna

It is in the bending and the pain,

the way old paint scrapes off old wood,

the way elders light our way through time

on their way to a smaller frailty.

A halo about the painted head of Jesus

on the yellow wall of Our Lady of the Valley

Church fades where teachers make a pittance,

richly among brown-faced children.

A burlap robe on a dark pilgrim walking

up Mout Cristo Rey with sandals as sunset

blurs a perfect pink, like the palm of God pressing

down on the bent heads of the broken,

who learn prayers amidst a harshness

I have yet to know. The barrio full of narrow

streets, adobe homes, and sweet yucca flowers

bud in the air like a rainy night.

Theres a way the sand clings to the wind

and the sands brown the sky in a sadness

that sings some kind of endless echo of the border,

where the chain-link fence stretches for miles

and miles and the torn shirts of men flap

from the steel like trapped birds.

The river is narrow and appears slow.

The cardboard shanties of Colonias unveiled

among the vast open desert like ants.

The faces of the poor smiling and singing

as if sunset were a gift; the desert blooms

red and white flowers on the thinnest sparest cacti,

groundhogs breathe coolly in the earth.And here, on Cinco de Mayo the cornea of god

glints faintly in a thin rainbow;

the hands of god rest over the blue hills,

the song of god in the throats of sparrows,

Bless You.

Bless You.


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This is the way the border transfigures greed,

shapes it into something holy;

and paisanos stand alert; even pigeons soar

with something akin to the music of the spheres,

and Spanish flutters through the smoke

that burns through our small lives.

Apprehensionsby Sylvia Plath

There is this white wall, above which the sky creates itself-

Infinite, green, utterly untouchable.

Angels swim in it, and the stars, in indifference also.

They are my medium.The sun dissolves on this wall, bleeding its lights.

A grey wall now, clawed and bloody.

Is there no way out of the mind?

Steps at my back spiral into a well.

There are no trees or birds in this world,

There is only sourness.

This red wall winces continually:

A red fist, opening and closing,

Two grey, papery bags-

This is what I am made of, this, and a terror

Of being wheeled off under crosses and rain of pieties.

On a black wall, unidentifiable birds

Swivel their heads and cry.

There is no talk of immorality amoung these!

Cold blanks approach us:

They move in a hurry.


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Weep Holesby Naseer Ahmed Nasir

Dont take us for the wall itself

For when the earthen plank behind the wall

Gets soaked through

Well let the sorrow of burdonsome wetness

Flow through us

The soil sucks the trees roots till now

Till now the sorrow of waters

hasnt reached the earthen plank behind the walls

Earth has not seen the woebegone face of the sky

The wall hasnt learnt to shed tears

Wind even now expects to blow the leaves away

Empty polythene bags sputter on roads

That never had trees planted on sidesPeople drink blood of their own climes

And grow like germs

Bonfire conflagrations ignite every where

Smoke has turned the flowers black

Butterflies wings look ashen

The dreams face will bend under pressure

And break into smithereens

Let the moisture come!

Let the clouds of pains burst!

Let the skys sorrow descend to the earth!

Dont consider us the wall itself

Dont think were but worthless

For when the earthen plank behind the retaining wall

Gets soaked

Well be there to let the sorrow

Of burdensome wetness

flow through us

Look! Our eyes do not have tears

But the mud of our dreams.


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Salvageby Carl Sandburg

Guns on the battle lines have pounded now a year

between Brussels and Paris.

And, William Morris, when I read your old chapter on

the great arches and naves and little whimsicalcorners of the Churches of Northern FranceBrr-rr!

Im glad youre a dead man, William Morris, Im glad

youre down in the damp and mouldy, only a memory

instead of a living manIm glad youre gone.

You never lied to us, William Morris, you loved the

shape of those stones piled and carved for you to

dream over and wonder because workmen got joy

of life into them,

Workmen in aprons singing while they hammered, and

praying, and putting their songs and prayers into

the walls and roofs, the bastions and cornerstonesand gargoylesall their children and kisses of

women and wheat and roses growing.

I say, William Morris, Im glad youre gone, Im glad

youre a dead man.

Guns on the battle lines have pounded a year now between

Brussels and Paris.

A.E.F.by Carl Sandburg

There will be a rusty gun on the wall, sweetheart,

The rifle grooves curling with flakes of rust.

A spider will make a silver string nest in the

darkest, warmest corner of it.

The trigger and the range-finder, they too will be rusty.

And no hands will polish the gun, and it will hang on the wall.

Forefingers and thumbs will point casually toward it.It will be spoken among half-forgotten, whished-to-be-forgotten

things.

They will tell the spider: Go on, youre doing good work.


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And They Obeyby Carl Sandburg

Smash down the cities.

Knock the walls to pieces.

Break the factories and cathedrals, warehouses

and homesInto loose piles of stone and lumber and black

burnt wood:

You are the soldiers and we command you.

Build up the cities.

Set up the walls again.

Put together once more the factories and cathedrals,

warehouses and homes

Into buildings for life and labor:

You are workmen and citizens all: We

command you.

Noon Hourby Carl Sandburg

She sits in the dust at the walls

And makes cigars,

Bending at the bench

With fingers wage-anxious,

Changing her sweat for the days pay.

Now the noon hour has come,

And she leans with her bare arms

On the window-sill over the river,

Leans and feels at her throat

Cool-moving things out of the free open ways:

At her throat and eyes and nostrils

The touch and the blowing coolOf great free ways beyond the walls.


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They Will Sayby Carl Sandburg

Of my city the worst that men will ever say is this:

You took little children away from the sun and the dew,

And the glimmers that played in the grass under the great sky,

And the reckless rain; you put them between walls

To work, broken and smothered, for bread and wages,

To eat dust in their throats and die empty-hearted

For a little handful of pay on a few Saturday nights

The Harborby Carl Sandburg

Passing through huddled and ugly walls

By doorways where womenLooked from their hunger-deep eyes,

Haunted with shadows of hunger-hands,

Out from the huddled and ugly walls,

I came sudden, at the citys edge,

On a blue burst of lake,

Long lake waves breaking under the sun

On a spray-flung curve of shore;

And a fluttering storm of gulls,

Masses of great gray wings

And flying white bellies

Veering and wheeling free in the open.

Prayers of Steelby Carl Sandburg

Lay me on an anvil, O God.

Beat me and hammer me into a crowbar.

Let me pry loose old walls.

Let me lift and loosen old foundations.

Lay me on an anvil, O God.

Beat me and hammer me into a steel spike.

Drive me into the girders that hold a skyscraper together.

Take red-hot rivets and fasten me into the central girders.

Let me be the great nail holding a skyscraper through blue nights

into white stars.


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The Garden Wallby David Morton

THE ROMAN wall was not more grave than this,

That has no league at all with great affairs,

That knows no ruder hands than clematis,

No louder blasts than blowing April airs.Yet, with a gray solemnity it broods,

Above the walk where simple folk go past,

And in its crannies keeps their transient moods,

Holding their careless words unto the last.

The rains of summer, and the creeping vine

That season after season clings in trust,

And shivered poppies red as Roman wine,

These things at last will haunt its crumbled dust

Not dreams of empires shattered where they lie,

But childrens laughter, birds, and bits of sky.

Behind the Wallsby Charletta Erb

Love immersing the river

A door opens for me to enter

To hug, to sit, to smile

A hand to hold

Courage to shout through wallsDigo la verdad! (I tell the truth)

Prayers shake out our anger

Outside, voices rise

Heat in the air

In their voices

O Dios mio, no! (Oh my God, no!)

Yet we come not to judge

But to decide to protect

Mandarin to cool

She opens the door to stand

Aqui yo estoy para frente (Here I am out front, up front)

Si, digo la verdad!

My community

Will support me, protect me

She breathes heavy, but poised

Out from behind the walls.


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To a Persian Manuscriptby Ida ONeil

BEHIND the high white wall

There is always a garden

A lawn, close-clipped and pale,

Studded with flowers;There they have placed a chair

For the happy guest,

And slim high-bosomed maidens

Bring flesh and figs and wine

In bowls of peacock blue.

Beyond the minaretted gate

Go elephants in caravan,

And horsemen ride through forest tracery

Of gold and flowers

To citiesArched and white against the sky.

These are windows

Opening on a golden world

Blooming-islands on a sea

Of dim, dust colored vellum,

While the ripples

Painted rhythms,

Sable characters

Bear challenge to the wit

More potent still

Than half-guessed imagery

Of illumined page.

And as the traveller without the wall

Divines with thirsty heart

The hidden flash of fountains,

So to me, among these silent books,

Is borne the cadence of a desert tongue,

And beauty blossoms here

Upon my knees.


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Those fantastic forms, fang-sharp,

Bone-bare, that in Byzantine painting

Were shorthand for the Unbounded

Beyond the Pale, unpoliced spaces

Where dragons dwelt and demons roamed,

Colonized only by ex-worldlings,

Penitent sophists, and sodomites,

Are visual facts in the foreground now,

Real structures of steel and glass:

Hermits, perforce, are all today,

With numbered caves in enormous jails,

Hotels designed to deteriorate

Their glum already corrupted guests,

Factories in which the functional

Hobbesian Man is mass-produced.

A key to the street each convict has,

But the Alphalt Lanes are lawless marches

Where gangs clash and cops turn

Robber barrons: reckless he

Who walks after dark in that wilderness.

But electric lamps allow nightly

Cell meetings where subcultures

May hold palaver, like-minded,

Their tongues tattooed by the tribal jargon

Of the vice or business that brothers them:

And mean cafs to remain open

Where, in bad air, belly-talkers,

Weedy-looking, work-shy

May spout unreason, some ruthless creed

To a dozen dupes till dawn break.

Every workday Eve fares

Forth to the stores her food to pluck,

While Adam hunts an easy dollar:

Unperspiring at eventide

Both eat their bread in boredom of spirit.

The weekend comes that once was holy,

Free still but a feast no longer,

Just time out, idiorrhyhmic,

When no one cares what his neighbor does:

Now newsprint and network are needed most.

City Without Wallsby W.H. Auden

What they view may be vulgar rubbish,

What they listen to witless noise,

But it gives shelter, shields them from

Sundays Bane, the basilisking

Glare of Nothing, our pernicious foe.

For what to Nothing shall nobodies answer?

Still super-physiques are there,Frequently photographed, feel at home,

But ordinary flesh is unwanted:

Engines do better what biceps did.

And soon computers may expel from the world

All but the top intelligent few,

The egos they leisure be left to dig

Value, virtue, from an invisible realm

Of hobbies, sex, consumption, vague

Tussles with ghosts. Against Whom

Shall the Sons band to rebel there,Where Troll-Father, Tusked-Mother

Are dream-monsters like dinosaurs

With a built-in obsolescence?

A Gadgeted Age, yet as unworldly

As when faintly the light filtered down

On the first men in Mirkwood,

Waiting their turn at the water hole

With the magic beasts who made the paths.

Small marvel, then, if many adopt

Cancer as the only offered careerWorth-while, if wards are full of

Gents who believe they are Jesus Christ

Or guilty of the Unforgivable Sin:

If arcadian lawns where classic shoulders,

Baroque bottoms make beaux gestes

Is too tame a dream for the dislocated,

If their lewd fancies are of flesh debased

By damage, indignities, dirty words:

If few now applaud a play that ends

With warmth and pardon the word to allAs, blessed, unbamboozled, the bridal pairs,

Rustic and oppidan, in a ring-dance

Image the stars at their stately branses:


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If all has gone phut in the future we paint,

Where, vast and vacant, venomous areas

Surround the small sporadic patches

Of fen and forest that give food and shelter,

Such home as they have, to a human remnant,

Stunted in stature, strangely deformed,

Numbering by fives, with no zero,Worshiping a juju General Mo

In groups ruled by grandmnothers,

Hirstute witches who, on winter nights,

Fable them stories of fair-haired elves

Whose magic made the mountain dam,

Of dwarves, cunning in craft, who smithied

The treasure hoards of tin cans

They flatten out for their hut roofs . . . .

Still moneyed, immune, stands Megalopolis:

Happy he who hopes for better,What awaits Her may well be worse.

Thus, I was thinking at three A.M.

In mid-Manhattan till interrupted,

Cut short by a sharp voice:

What fun and games you find it to play

Jeremiah -cum-Juvenal.

Shame on you for yourSchadenfreude!

My! I blustered. How moral were getting!

A pococurante? Suppose I were,

So what, if my words are true.

Thereupon, bored, a third voice:

Go to sleep now for Gods sake!

You both will feel better by breakfast time.


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The Gardenby Ezra Pound

En robe de parade. Samain

LIKE a skein of loose silk blown against a wallShe walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Gardens,

And she is dying piece-meal

of a sort of emotional anemia.

And round about there is a rabble

Of the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor.

They shall inherit the earth.

In her is the end of breeding.

Her boredom is exquisite and excessive.

She would like some one to speak to her,And is almost afraid that I

will commit that indiscretion.

From Paracelsusby Robert Browning

TRUTH is within ourselves; it takes no rise

From outward things, whateer you may believe.There is an inmost centre in us all,

Where truth abides in fullness; and around,

Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in,

This perfect, clear perceptionwhich is truth.

A baffling and perverting carnal mesh

Binds it, and makes all error: and, to KNOW,

Rather consists in opening out a way

Whence the imprisoned splendour may escape,

Than in effecting entry for a light

Supposed to be without.


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A Fence or an Ambulanceby Joseph Malins (1895)

Twas a dangerous cliff, as they freely confessed,

Though to walk near its crest was so pleasant;

But over its terrible edge there had slipped

A duke and full many a peasant.So the people said something would have to be done,

But their projects did not at all tally;

Some said, Put a fence round the edge of the cliff,

Some, An ambulance down in the valley.

But the cry for the ambulance carried the day,

For it spread through the neighboring city;

A fence may be useful or not, it is true,

But each heart became full of pity

For those who slipped over the dangerous cliff;

And the dwellers in highway and alleyGave pounds and gave pence, not to put up a fence,

But an ambulance down in the valley.

For the cliff is all right, if your careful, they said,

And, if folks even slip and are dropping,

It isnt the slipping that hurts them so much

As the shock down below when theyre stopping.

So day after day, as these mishaps occurred,

Quick forth would those rescuers sally

To pick up the victims who fell off the cliff,

With their ambulance down in the valley.

Then an old sage remarked: Its a marvel to me

That people give far more attention

To repairing results than to stopping the cause,

When theyd much better aim at prevention.

Let us stop at its source all this mischief, cried he,

Come, neighbors and friends, let us rally;

If the cliff we will fence, we might almost dispense

With the ambulance down in the valley.

Oh hes a fanatic, the others rejoined,

Dispense with the ambulance? Never!

Hed dispense with all charities, too, if he could;

No! No! Well support them forever.

Arent we picking up folks just as fast as they fall?

And shall this man dictate to us? Shall he?

Why should people of sense stop to put up a fence,

While the ambulance works in the valley?


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But the sensible few, who are practical too,

Will not bear with such nonsense much longer;

They believe that prevention is better than cure,

And their party will soon be the stronger.

Encourage them then, with your purse, voice, and pen,

And while other philanthropists dally,

They will scorn all pretense, and put up a stout fence

On the cliff that hangs over the valley.

Better guide well the young than reclaim them when old,

For the voice of true wisdom is calling.

To rescue the fallen is good, but tis best

To prevent other people from falling.

Better close up the source of temptation and crime

Than deliver from dungeon or galley;

Better put a strong fence round the top of the cliff

Than an ambulance down in the valley.

Baby Byeby Theodore Tilton

Baby bye

Heres a fly,

Let us watch him, you and I,

How he crawls

Up the wallsYet he never falls


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Wallby Norman Nicholson

The wall walks the fell

Grey millipede on slow

Stone hooves;

Its slack black hollowed

At gulleys and grooves,Or shouldering over

Old Boulders

Too big to be rolled away.

Fallen fragments

Of the high crags

Crawl in the walk of the wall.

A dry-stone wall

is a wall and a wall,

Leaning together

(Cumberland-and-Westmorland

Champion wrestlers),

Greening and weathering,

Flank by flank,

With filling of ribble

Between the two

A double-rank

Stone dyke:

Flags and through


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Facing Itby Yuseg Komunyakaa

My black face fades,

hiding inside the black granite.

I said I wouldnt,

dammit: No tears.

Im stone. Im flesh.My clouded reflection eyes me

like a bird of prey, the profile of night

slanted against morning. I turn

this way - the stone lets me go.

I turn that way - Im inside

the Vietnam Veterans Memorial

again, depending on the light

to make a difference.

I go down the 58,022 names,

half-expecting to find

my own letters like smoke.

I touch the name Andrew Johnson;

I see the booby traps white flash.

Names shimmer on a womans blouse

but when she walks away

the names stay on the wall.

Brushstrokes flash, a red birds

wings cutting across my stare.

The sky. A plane in the sky.

A white vets image floats

closer to me, then his pale eyes

look through mine. I am a window.

Hes lost his right arminside the stone. In the black mirror

a womans trying to erase names:

No, shes brushing a boys hair.


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Scrubbing the Furious Walls of Mikuyuby Jack Mapanje

Is this where they dump those rebels,

These haggard cells stinking of bucket

Shit and vomit and the acrid urine of

Yesteryears? Who would have thought I

Would be gazing at these dusty, cobwebCeilings of Mikuyu Prison, scrubbing

Briny walls and riddling out impteuous

Scratches of another dung-beetle locked

Up before me here? Violent human palms

Wounded these blood-bloated mosquitoes

And bugs (to survive), leaving these vicious

Red marks. Monstrous cockroaches

Crashed here. Up there the cobwebs trapped

Dead bumblebees. Where did black wasps

Get clay to build nests in this corner?

But here, scratches, insolent scratches!

I have marvelled at the rock paintings

Of Mphunzl Hills once but these grooves

And notches on the walls of Mikuyu Prison,

How furious, what barbarous squiggles!

How long did this anger languish without

Charge, without trial, without visit here, and

what justice committed? This is the moment

We dreaded: when wed all descend into

The pit, alone, without wife or child -

Without mother, without a paper or a pencil

- without a story (just three Bibles forNinethy men), without charge without trial;

This is the moment I never needed to see.

Shall I scrub these brave squiggles out

Of human memory then or should I perhaps

Superimpose my own, less caustic; dare I

Overwrtie this precisous scrawl? Whod

Have known Id find another prey without

Charge, without trial (without bitterness)

In these otherwise blank walls of Mikuyu

Prison? No, I will throw my water and mop

Elsewhere. We have liquidated too many

Brave names out of the nations memory.

I will not rub out another, nor inscribe

My own, more ignoble, to consummate this

Moment of truth I have always feared!


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Fencesby Pat Mora

Mouths full of laughter,

the turistas come to the tall hotel

with suitcases full of dollars.

Every morning my brother makes

the cool beach new for them.

With a wooden board he smooths

away all footprints.

I peek through the cactus fence

and watch the women rub oil

sweeter than honey into their arms and legs

hile their children jump waves

or sip drinks from long straws,

coconut white, mango yellow.

Once my little sister

ran barefoot across the hot sand

for a taste.

My mother roared like the ocean,

No. No. Its their beach.

Its their beach.

Frogs leapest the highest fencesby James Wakelin

Today I ventured forth

it didnt bring me much; a frog and a piece of string

but

I entered the realm of the frog and

it taught me how to jump over fences as high

as your nose

It didnt amount to much as I was quite tired and sick of the frog

so I squashed it

it deserved its death

The piece of string had an important role though

it measured how high the frog jumped and

it so happened it had jumped the highest of fences

on my property


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Rural Fenceby Tom Wayman

Order against the jumbled

Cedar, birch or

Hawthorn branches

Even when a post cantsOff true, wires sag

Or horizontal boards droop

A fence maintains an utter contrast

To the scramble of leaves and twigs

Which sway and shift

While the fence offers

A braced

Stolidity

And in winter

When only the post-tops

And uppermost strands or rails

Hoist their chins above waves of snow

Heaving toward them

Or when the meadow seems boundless

Except for the low mounds where the shoreline

Once was, the persistence of fencing

Nearly lost

Speaks of another season, of

Fence as seed

Of mullein, daisy, bunchgrass

Our handiwork become natural

This perimeter we

Construct and mend

To testify

Compel acquiescence

Celebrate


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Fences, Neighbors, Riversby Ed Hausken

Good neighbor, this fence

wont halt morning glories, wild

blackberry vines.

This world confounds perfection.This river roils

green in winter, outlasts stone.

Let vines take the fence

or fences ruin. This river

shapes our border, runs gray

in blackberry time

Deer Fenceby Linda Pastan

Inside the new deer fence

wildflowers, absent for years,

cover our hill again with half-forgotten

flecks of white, like so many

ghosts of themselves

on the dark floor of the forest.

I pick a bunch: tooth wort,

and Dutchmans-breeches,

so luminous with mysterywe must tame them with the names

of household things.

But where are the deer now?

What other womans flowers

fill their mouths with

the soft colors of spring?


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Sonnet XXXIIIby Pablo Neruda

Love, were going home now,

where the vines clamber over the trellis:

even before you, the summer will arrive,

on its honeysuckle feet, in your bedroom.

Our nomadic kisses wandered over all the world:

Armenia, dollop of disinterred honey--:

Ceylon, green dove--: and the Yang-Tse with its old

old patience, dividing the day from the night.

And now, dearest, we return, across the crackling sea

like two blind birds to their wall,

to their nest in a distant spring:

because love cannot always fly without resting,

our lives return to the wall, to the rocks of the sea:

our kisses head back home where they belong.

The Pickety Fenceby David McCord

The pickety fence

The pickety fence

Give it a lick its

The pickety fence

Give it a lick its

A clickety fence

Give it a lick its

A lickety fence

Give it a lick

Give it a lick

Give it a lick

With a rickety stick

PicketyPickety

Pickety

Pick


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The Precinct. Rochesterby Amy Lowell

The tall yellow hollyhocks stand,

Still and straight,

With their round blossoms spread open,

In the quiet sunshine.

And still is the old Roman wall,Rough with jagged bits of flint,

And jutting stones,

Old and cragged,

Quite still in its antiquity.

The pear-trees press their branches against it,

And feeling it warm and kindly,

The little pears ripen to yellow and red.

They hang heavy, bursting with juice,

Against the wall.

So old, so still!

The sky is still.

The clouds make no sound

As they slide away

Beyond the Cathedral Tower,

To the river,

And the sea.

It is very quiet,

Very sunny.

The myrtle flowers stretch themselves in the sunshine,

But make no sound.

The roses push their little tendrils up,

And climb higher and higher.

In spots they have climbed over the wall.But they are very still,

They do not seem to move.

And the old wall carries them

Without effort, and quietly

Ripens and shields the vines and blossoms.

A bird in a plane-tree

Sings a few notes,

Cadenced and perfect

They weave into the silence.

The Cathedral bell knocks,

One, two, three, and again,

And then again.

It is a quiet sound,

Calling to prayer,

Hardly scattering the stillness,

Only making it close in more densely.

The gardener picks ripe gooseberries

For the Deans supper to-night.

It is very quiet,

Very regulated and mellow.


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But the wall is old,

It has known many days.

It is a Roman wall,

Left-over and forgotten.

Beyond the Cathedral Close

Yelp and mutter the discontents of people not mellow,

Not well-regulated.

People who care more for bread than for beauty,Who would break the tombs of saints,

And give the painted windows of churches

To their children for toys.

People who say:

They are dead, we live!

The world is for the living.

Fools! It is always the dead who breed.

Crush the ripe fruit, and cast it aside,

Yet its seeds shall fructify,

And trees rise where your huts were standing.

But the little people are ignorant,

They chaffer, and swarm.

They gnaw like rats,

And the foundations of the Cathedral are honeycombed.

The Dean is in the Chapter House;

He is reading the architects bill

For the completed restoration of the Cathedral.

He will have ripe gooseberries for supper,

And then he will walk up and down the path

By the wall,

And admire the snapdragons and dahlias,

Thinking how quiet and peaceful

The garden is.The old wall will watch him,

Very quietly and patiently it will watch.

For the wall is old,

It is a Roman wall.


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my love is building a buildingby e e cummings

my love is building a building

around you, a frail slippery

house, a strong fragile house

(beginning at the singular beginning

of your smile)a skilful uncouth

prison, a precise clumsy

prison(building thatandthis into Thus,

Around the reckless magic of your mouth)

my love is building a magic, a discrete

tower of magic and(as i guess)

when Farmer Death(whom fairies hate)shall

crumble the mouth-flower fleet

Hell not my tower,

laborious, casual

where the surrounded smile

hangs

breathless

Of This Wilting Wall The Colour Drube e Cummings

of this wilting wall the colour drub

souring sunbeams,of a foetal fragrance

to rickety unclosed blinds inslants

peregrinate,a cigar-stub

disintegrates,above,underdrawers club

the faintly sweating air with pinkness,

one pale dog behind a slopcaked shrub

painstakingly utters a slippery mess,

a star sleepily,feebly,scratches the sore

of morning. But i am interested more

intricately in the delicate scorn

with which in a putrid window every day

almost leans a lady whose still-born

smile involves the comedy of decay


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Metaphors Of A Magnificoby Wallace Stevens

Twenty men crossing a bridge,

Into a village,

Are twenty men crossing twenty bridges,

Into twenty villages,Or one man

Crossing a single bridge into a village.

This is old song

That will not declare itself . . .

Twenty men crossing a bridge,

Into a village,

Are

Twenty men crossing a bridge

Into a village.

That will not declare itself

Yet is certain as meaning . . .

The boots of the men clump

On the boards of the bridge.

The first white wall of the village

Rises through fruit-trees.

Of what was it I was thinking?

So the meaning escapes.

The first white wall of the village...

The fruit-trees...


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One, from his high bright window in a towerby Conrad Aiken

One, from his high bright window in a tower,

Leans out, as evening falls,

And sees the advancing curtain of the shower

Splashing its silver on roofs and walls:Sees how, swift as a shadow, it crosses the city,

And murmurs beyond far walls to the sea,

Leaving a glimmer of water in the dark canyons,

And silver falling from eave and tree.

One, from his high bright window, looking down,

Peers like a dreamer over the rain-bright town,

And thinks its towers are like a dream.

The western windows flame in the suns last flare,

Pale roofs begin to gleam.

Looking down from a window high in a wall

He sees us all;

Lifting our pallid faces towards the rain,

Searching the sky, and going our ways again,

Standing in doorways, waiting under the trees . . .

There, in the high bright window he dreams, and sees

What we are blind to,we who mass and crowd

From wall to wall in the darkening of a cloud.

The gulls drift slowly above the city of towers,

Over the roofs to the darkening sea they fly;

Night falls swiftly on an evening of rain.

The yellow lamps wink one by one again.

The towers reach higher and blacker against the sky.


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The Bridgeby Ron Rash

Barbed wire snags like briars when

fence posts rot in goldenrod,

the cows are gone, the cowpath

a thinning along the creek

to follow upstream until

water narrows, gray planks lean

over the flow like a book

open but left unfinished,

like this bridge was when the man

who started it took to his

death-bed, watched from there a son

drive the last nails, drive the truck

across so he might die less

burdened that night. The farmhouse

is razed now, the barn and shed

bare quilts of ground. All thats leftsome fallen-down four by fours,

a few rusty nails, this bridge

the quick or the dead cant cross.

The Need of Being Versed in Country Thingsby Robert Frost

The house had gone to bring again

To the midnight sky a sunset glow.

Now the chimney was all of the house that stood,Like a pistil after the petals go.

The barn opposed across the way,

That would have joined the house in flame

Had it been the will of the wind, was left

To bear forsaken the places name.

No more it opened with all one end

For teams that came by the stony road

To drum on the floor with scurrying hoofs

And brush the mow with the summer load.

The birds that came to it through the air

At broken windows flew out and in,

Their murmur more like the sigh we sigh

From too much dwelling on what has been.

Yet for them the lilac renewed its leaf,

And the aged elm, though touched with fire;

And the dry pump flung up an awkward arm;

And the fence post carried a strand of wire.

For them there was really nothing sad.

But though they rejoiced in the nest they kept,

One had to be versed in country things

Not to believe the phoebes wept.


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Toad DreamsMarge Piercy

That afternoon the dream of the toads

rang through the elms by Little River

and affected the thoughts of men,

though they were not conscious thatthey heard it.--Henry Thoreau

The dream of toads: we rarely

credit what we consider lesser

life with emotions big as ours,

but we are easily distracted,

abstracted. People sit nibbling

before televisions flicker watching

ghosts chase balls and each other

while the skunk is out risking grislydeath to cross the highway to mate;

while the fox scales the wire fence

where it knows the shotgun lurks

to taste the sweet blood of a hen.

Birds are greedy little bombs

bursting to give voice to appetite.

I had a cat who died of love.

Dogs trail their masters across con-

tinents. We are far too busy

to be starkly simple in passion.

We will never dream the intense

wet spring lust of the toads.

The Cow In Apple-Timeby Robert Frost

Something inspires the only cow of late

To make no more of a wall than an open gate,

And think no more of wall-builders than fools.

Her face is flecked with pomace and she drools

A cider syrup. Having tasted fruit,

She scorns a pasture withering to the root.

She runs from tree to tree where lie and sweeten.

The windfalls spiked with stubble and worm-eaten.

She leaves them bitten when she has to fly.

She bellows on a knoll against the sky.

Her udder shrivels and the milk goes dry


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The Cathedral Of Rheimsby Joyce Kilmer

(From the French of Emile Verhaeren)

He who walks through the meadows of Champagne

At noon in Fall, when leaves like gold appear,

Sees it draw near

Like some great mountain set upon the plain,From radiant dawn until the close of day,

Nearer it grows

To him who goes

Across the country. When tall towers lay

Their shadowy pall

Upon his way,

He enters, where

The solid stone is hollowed deep by all

Its centuries of beauty and of prayer.

Ancient French temple! thou whose hundred kings

Watch over thee, emblazoned on thy walls,

Tell me, within thy memory-hallowed halls

What chant of triumph, or what war-song rings?

Thou hast known Clovis and his Frankish train,

Whose mighty hand Saint Remys hand did keep

And in thy spacious vault perhaps may sleep

An echo of the voice of Charlemagne.

For God thou has known fear, when from His side

Men wandered, seeking alien shrines and new,

But still the sky was bountiful and blue

And thou wast crowned with Frances love and pride.

Sacred thou art, from pinnacle to base;And in thy panes of gold and scarlet glass

The setting sun sees thousandfold his face;

Sorrow and joy, in stately silence pass

Across thy walls, the shadow and the light;

Around thy lofty pillars, tapers white

Illuminate, with delicate sharp flames,

The brows of saints with venerable names,

And in the night erect a fiery wall.

A great but silent fervour burns in all

Those simple folk who kneel, pathetic, dumb,

And know that down below, beside the Rhine

Cannon, horses, soldiers, flags in line

With blare of trumpets, mighty armies come.

Suddenly, each knows fear;

Swift rumours pass, that every one must hear,

The hostile banners blaze against the sky

And by the embassies mobs rage and cry.

Now war has come, and peace is at an end.

On Paris town the German troops descend.


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They are turned back, and driven to Champagne.

And now, as to so many weary men,

The glorious temple gives them welcome, when

It meets them at the bottom of the plain.

At once, they set their cannon in its way.

There is no gable now, nor wall

That does not suffer, night and day,As shot and shell in crushing torrents fall.

The stricken tocsin quivers through the tower;

The triple nave, the apse, the lonely choir

Are circled, hour by hour,

With thundering bands of fire

And Death is scattered broadcast among men.

And then

That which was splendid with baptismal grace;

The stately arches soaring into space,

The transepts, columns, windows gray and gold,

The organ, in whose tones the ocean rolled,

The crypts, of mighty shades the dwelling places,

The Virgins gentle hands, the Saints pure faces,

All, even the pardoning hands of Christ the Lord

Were struck and broken by the wanton sword

Of sacrilegious lust.

O beauty slain, O glory in the dust!

Strong walls of faith, most basely overthrown!

The crawling flames, like adders glistening

Ate the white fabric of this lovely thing.

Now from its soul arose a piteous moan,The soul that always loved the just and fair.

Granite and marble loud their woe confessed,

The silver monstrances that Popes had blessed,

The chalices and lamps and crosiers rare

Were seared and twisted by a flaming breath;

The horror everywhere did range and swell,

The guardian Saints into this furnace fell,

Their bitter tears and screams were stilled in death.

Around the flames armed hosts are skirmishing,

The burning sun reflects the lurid scene;

The German army, fighting for its life,Rallies its torn and terrified left wing;

And, as they near this place

The imperial eagles see

Before them in their flight,

Here, in the solemn night,

The old cathedral, to the years to be

Showing, with wounded arms, their own disgrace.


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Mr. And Mrs. Discobbolos - Second Partby Edward Lear

I

Mr. and Mrs. Discobbolos

Lived on the top of the wall,.

For twenty years, a month and a day,Till their hair had grown all pearly gray,

And their teeth began to fall.

They never were ill, or at all dejected,

By all admired, and by some respected,

Till Mrs. Discobbolos said,

Oh! W! X! Y! Z!

It has just come into my head,

We have no more room at all

Darling Mr. Discobbolos

II

Look at our six fine boys!

And our six sweet girls so fair!

Upon this wall they have all been born,

And not one of the twelve has happened to fall

Through my maternal care!

Surely they should not pass their lives

Without any chance of husbands or wives!

And Mrs. Discobbolos said,

Oh! W! X! Y! Z!

Did it never come into your head

That our lives must be lived elsewhere,Dearest Mr. Discobbolos?

III

They have never been at a ball,

Nor have ever seen a bazaar!

Nor have heard folks say in a tone all hearty

What loves of girls (at a garden party)

Those Misses Discobbolos are!

Morning and night it drives me wild

To think of the fate of each darling child!

But Mr. Discobbolos said,

Oh! W! X! Y! Z!

What has come to your fiddledum head!

What a runcible goose you are!

Octopod Mrs. Discobbolos!


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IV

Suddenly Mr. Discobbolos

Slid from the top of the wall;

And beneath it he dug a dreadful trench,

And fille it with dynamite, gunpowder gench,

And aloud he began to call

Let the wild bee sing,And the blue bird hum!

For the end of our lives has certainly come!

And Mrs. Discobbolos said,

Oh! W! X! Y! Z!

We shall presently all be dead,

On this ancient runcible wall,

Terrible Mr. Discobbolos!

V

Pensively, Mr. Discobbolos

Sat with his back to the wall;He lighted a match, and fired the train,

And the mortified mountain echoed again

To the sound of an awful fall!

And all the Discobbolos family flew

In thousands of bits to the sky so blue,

And no one was left to have said,

Oh! W! X! Y! Z!

Has it come into anyones head

That the end has happened to all

Of the whole of the Clan Discobbolos?

Humpty Dumpty

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall;

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

All the Kings horses

And all the Kings men

Couldnt put Humpty together again!


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Ruinsby Robert Service

Ruins in Rome are four a penny,

And here along the Appian Way

I see the monuments of many

Esteemed almighty in their day. . . .Or so he makes me understand

My glib guide of the rubber bus,

And tells me with a gesture grand:

Behold! the tomb of Romulus.

Whereat I stared with eyes of awe,

And yet a whit dismayed was I,

When on its crumbling wall I saw

A washing hanging out to dry;

Yea, that relict of slow decay,

With peristyle and gnarly frieze,Was garnished with a daft display

Of bifurcation and chemise.

But as we went our Southward way

Another ruin soon I saw;

No antique tower, gaunt and grey,

But modern manor rubbled raw;

And on its sill a maiden sat,

And told me in a tone of rue:

It was your allied bombs did that . . .

But do not think were blaming you.

Thought I: Time is more kind than we

Who blot out beauty with a blow;

And truly it was sad to see

A gracious mansion levelled low . . .

While moulderings of ancient Rome

Still serve the peasants for their swine,

We do not leave a lovely home

A wall to hang a washing line.


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A Wallby Robert Browning

O the old wall here! How I could pass

Life in a long midsummer day,

My feet confined to a plot of grass,

My eyes from a wall not once away!

And lush and lithe do the creepers clothe

Yon wall I watch, with a wealth of green:

Its bald red bricks draped, nothing loath,

In lappets of tangle they laugh between.

Now, what is it makes pulsate the robe?

Why tremble the sprays? What life oerbrims

The body,the house no eye can probe,

Divined, as beneath a robe, the limbs?

And there again! But my heart may guess

Who tripped behind; and she sang, perhaps:

So the old wall throbbed, and its lifes excess

Died out and away in the leafy wraps.

Wall upon wall are between us: life

And song should away from heart to heart!

Iprison-bird, with a ruddy strife

At breast, and a lip whence storm-notes start

Hold on, hope hard in the subtle thing

Thats spirit: tho cloistered fast, soar free;

Account as wood, brick, stone, this ring

Of the rueful neighbours, andforth to thee!


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A Wall in Naplesby Andrew Motion

I have forgotten whatever it was

I wanted to say. Also the way I wanted

to say it. Form and Music.

Perhaps it had something to do with - no,

thats not it. More likely, I should just

look at whatever there is

and fix myself to the earth. This wall,

I mean, which faces me over the street.

Smooth as a shaven chin

but pocked with the holes that scaffolders left

and flicked with an overflow-flag. Which still

leaves pigeon-shit, rain-streaks, washing -

or maybe the whole things really a board

where tiny singing meteors strike.

How can we tell what is true? I rest my case.

I rest my case and cannot imagine a hunger

greater than this. For marks.

For messages sent by hand. For signs of life.


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The Western Wallby Bernhard Frank

The spittle of kisses suckles

the moss in the stone; Samson

size blocks of mountain laid

side by side intransigent tohuman passion remind of

glory & rebuke defeat.

God

oozes out of the seams in

spurts of promise; dreams

of a third temple rising gold

& alabaster level all in-

essentials since the days of Titus.

Like the fig &

olive this wall has roots,sprouts from centuries of

wailing thru the years of fire.

It is

the sun to the sunflower the

magnet to the iron-core heart,

the black hole of all our history.

Paintersby Muriel Rukeyser

In the cave with a long-ago flare

a woman stands, her arms up. Red twig, black twig, brown twig.

A wall of leaping darkness over her.

The men are out hunting in the early light

But here in this flicker, one or two men, painting

and a woman among them.

Great living animals grow on the stone walls,

their pelts, their eyes, their sex, their hearts,

and the cave-painters touch them with life, red, brown, black,

a woman among them, painting.


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The Wallby Tadeusz Rozewicz

She turned her face to the wall

but she loves me

why did she turn away

with one motion of the head

you can turn away from the world

where sparrows chirp

and young people walk around

in loud ties

Now shes alone

in the face of a dead wall

and thats how things will remain

she will remain

against the overtowering wall

bent and small

fists clenched

and I sit

my legs made of stone

not stealing her away from this place

not lifting her

lighter than a sigh.


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Where theres a Wallby Joy Kogawa

where theres a wall

theres a way

around, over, or through

theres a gatemaybe a ladder

a door

a sentinel who

sometimes sleeps

there are secret passwords

you can overhear

there are methods of torture

for extracting clues

to maps of underground passageways

there are zepplins

helicopters, rockets, bombsbettering rams

armies with trumpets

whose all at once blast

shatters the foundations

where theres a wall

there are words

to whisper by a loose brick

wailing prayers to utter

special codes to tap

birds to carry messages

taped to their feet

there are letters to be written

novels even

on this side of the wall

I am standing staring at the top

lost in the clouds

I hear every sound you make

but cannot see you

I incline in the wrong direction

a voice cries faint as in a dream

from the belly

of the wall


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All of you undisturbed citiesby Rainer Maria Rilke

(translated by Robert Bly)

All of you undisturbed cities,

havent you ever longed for the enemy?

Id like to see you besieged by himfor ten endless and ground-shaking years.

Until you were desperate and mad with suffering;

finally in hunger you would feel his weight.

He lies outside the walls like a countryside.

And he knows very well how to endure

longer than the ones he comes to visit.

Climb up on your roofs and look out:

his camp is there, and his morale doesnt falter,

and his numbers do not decrease; he will not grow weaker,and he sends no one into the city to threaten

or promise, and no one to negotiate.

He is the one who breaks down the walls,

and when he works, he works in silence.

Ihr vielen unbestrmten Stdte,

habt ihr euch nie den Feind ersehnt?

O dass er euch belagert htte

ein langes schwankendes Jahrzehnt.

Bis ihr ihn trostlos und in Trauern,

bis dass ihr hungernd ihn ertrugt;

er liegt wie Landschaft vor den Mauern,

denn also wei er auszudauern

um jene, die er heimgesucht.

Schaut aus vom Rande eurer Dcher

da lagert er und wird nicht matt

und wird nicht weniger und schwcher

und schickt nicht Droher und Versprecher

und berreder in die Stadt.

Er ist der groe Mauerbrecher,

der eine stumme Arbeit hat.


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First Publicationsby Adrian Mitchell

My poems were first published

on lavatory walls

down in the Gents

where the girl I loved could never see themof course I didnt use her name

or sign the poems

Sometimes people smudged my words out

with piss or shit or snot

I didnt mind the piss so much

and the smudged poems

looked sort of streamlined and alive

when their blue letters became

soft streaks across the pockmarked yellow plaster

The Walls of a Townby Maniucheer Saadat Noury

If you want to know the heart of a town

You better read,

What in its walls have been written down?

If the walls are blank

And deliver no message for today or tomorrowPeople there are frightened and in a deep sorrow

If there is

Only a very unique slogan

The town is ruled by an atrocious demon

Take the delight of the presence in the town

And write down on a wall,

By an angel, the demon will be overthrown.


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Roman Wall Bluesby W. H. Auden

Over the heather the wet wind blows,

Ive lice in my tunic and a cold in my nose.

The rain comes pattering out of the sky,Im a Wall soldier, I dont know why.

The mist creeps over the hard grey stone,

My girls in Tungria; I sleep alone.

Aulus goes hanging around her place,

I dont like his manners, I dont like his face.

Pisos a Christian, he worships a fish;

Thered be no kissing if he had his wish.

She gave me a ring but I diced it away;

I want my girl and I want my pay.

When Im a veteran with only one eye

I shall do nothing but look at the sky.

Geometryby Rita Dove

I prove a theorem and the house expands:

the windows jerk free to hover near the ceiling,

the ceiling floats away with a sigh.

As the walls clear themselves of everything

but transparency, the scent of carnations

leaves with them. I am out in the open

and above the windows have hinged into butterflies,

sunlight glinting where theyve intersected.

They are going to some point true and unproven.


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56

The RuinDafydd ap Gwilym

Nothing but a ruin now

Between moorland and meadow,

Once the owners saw in you

A comely cottage, bright, new,

Now roof, rafters, ridge-pole, allBroken down by a broken wall.

A day of delight was once there

For me, long ago, no care

When I had a glimpse of her

Fair in an ingle-corner.

Beside each other we lay

In the delight of that day.

Her forearm, snowflake-lovely,

Softly white, pillowing me,

Proffered a pleasant pattern

For me to give in my turn,

And that was our blessing for

The new-cut lintel and door.

Now the wild wind, wailing by,

Crashes with curse and with cry

Against my stones, a tempest

Born and bred in the East,

Or south ram-batterers break

The shelter that folk forsake.

Life is illusion and grief;

A tile whirls off, as a leaf

Or a lath goes sailing, high

In the keening of kite-kill cry.

Could it be our couch once stood

Sturdily under that wood?

Pillar and post, it would seem

Now are less than a dream.

Are you that, or only the lost

Wreck of a fiddle, rune-ghost?

Dafydd, the cross on their graves

Marks what little it saves,

Says, They did well in their lives.


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A Worker Reads Historyby Bertolt Brecht

Who built the seven gates of Thebes?

The books are filled with names of kings.

Was it the kings who hauled the craggy blocks of stone?

And Babylon, so many times destroyed.Who built the city up each time? In which of Limas houses,

That city glittering with gold, lived those who built it?

In the evening when the Chinese wall was finished

Where did the masons go? Imperial Rome

Is full of arcs of triumph. Who reared them up? Over whom

Did the Caesars triumph? Byzantium lives in song.

Were all her dwellings palaces? And even in Atlantis of the legend

The night the seas rushed in,

The drowning men still bellowed for their slaves.

Young Alexander conquered India.He alone?

Caesar beat the Gauls.

Was there not even a cook in his army?

Phillip of Spain wept as his fleet

was sunk and destroyed. Were there no other tears?

Frederick the Greek triumphed in the Seven Years War.

Who triumphed with him?

Each page a victory

At whose expense the victory ball?

Every ten years a great man,

Who paid the piper?

So many particulars.

So many questions.


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Ground Zeroby William Stafford

A bomb photographed me on the stone,

on a white wall, a burned outline where

the bomb rays found me out in the open

and ended me, person and shadow, never to cast

a shadow again, but be here so lightthe sun doesnt know. People on Main Street

used to stand in their certain chosen places --

I walk around them. It wouldnt be right

if I stood there. But all of their shadows are mine now --

I am so white on the stone.

In The Bookby William Stafford

A hand appears.

It writes on the wall.

Just a hand moving in the air,

and writing on the wall.

A voice comes and says the words,

You have been weighed,

you have been judged,

and have failed.

The hand disappears, the voice

fades away into silence.

And a spirit stirs and fills

and room, all space, all things.

All this in The Book

asks, What have you done wrong?

But The Spirit says,

Come to me, who need comfort.

And the hand, the wall, the voiceare gone, but The Spirit is everywhere.

The story ends inside the book,

but outside, wherever you are --

It goes on


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59

Noteby William Stafford

The sparrows are as reckless as ever.

They dont care whether they fall.

I watch their wings this winter

vigorous birds, but a crumbling wall.

Waking at 3 a.m.by William Stafford

Even in the cave of the night when you

wake and are free and lonely,

neglected by others, discarded, loved only

by what doesnt matter--even in that

big room no one can see,

you push with your eyes till forever

comes in its twisted figure eight

and lies down in your head.

You think water in the river;

you think slower than the tide in

the grain of the wood; you become

a secret storehouse that saves the country,

so open and foolish and empty.

You look over all that the darkness

ripples across. More than has everbeen found comforts you. You open your

eyes in a vault that unlocks as fast

and as far as your thought can run.

A great snug wall goes around everything,

has always been there, will always

remain. It is a good world to be

lost in. It comforts you. It is

all right. And you sleep.


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60

The Murder of William Remingtonby Howard Nemerov

It is true, that even in the best-run state

Such things will happen; it is true,

Whats done is done. The law, whereby we hate

Our hatred, sees no fire in the flueBut by the smoke, and not for thought alone

It punishes, but for the thing thats done.

And yet there is the horror of the fact,

Though we knew not the man. To die in jail,

To be beaten to death, to know the act

Of personal fury before the eyes can fail

And the man die against the cold last wall

Of the lonely worldand neither is that all:

There is the terror too of each mans thought,That knows not, but must quietly suspect

His neighbor, friend, or self of being taught

To take an attitude merely correct;

Being frightened of his own cold image in

The glass of government, and his own sin,

Frightened lest senate house and prison wall

Be quarried of one stone, lest righteous and high

Look faintly smiling down and seem to call

A crime the welcome chance of liberty,

And any man an outlaw who aggrieves

The patriotism of a pair of thieves.

from Six Significant Landscapesby Wallace Stevens

VI

Rationalists, wearing square hats,

Think, in square rooms,

Looking at the floor,

Looking at the ceiling.

They confine themselves

To right-angled triangles.

If they tried rhomboids,

Cones, waving lines, ellipses --

As, for example, the ellipse of the half-moon --

Rationalists would wear sombreros.


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Ignoring the Linesby Daniel Quiterio

The best thing aBout

writing by hand is the

freedom you have What the hells up with those

red margins and blue linesanyway?

They just restrict

your ability to be creative

I say scRew

them! Write over them

Under them

On top of them Do what the hell you want and

dont write as youve been taught either

Whats wrong with colORing

outside of the lines?

Do your own thinBe yoUr own person

And dont

give a

shit

as to what OTHErs think

Be random and abstract

No one has to know what youre

thinking

And if they did

Who cares.

Sentences always sound best when writTen in

a

random way

Break the rules and give your teachers the finger

Freedom is about blank, white paper

Writing what you

want to write, where you want to write

Saying the things you would never normally say out loud

On paPEr, you have no friends,

So why bother restricting yourself

Be a jerk Be an assholeIts all about you

And wHat youre thinking


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The Icosasphereby Marianne Moore

In Buckinghamshire hedgerows

the birds nesting in the merged green density,

weave little bits of string and moths and feathers and thistledown,

in parabolic concentric curves and,working for concavity, leave spherical feats of rare efficiency;

whereas through lack of integration,

avid for someones fortune,

three were slain and ten committed perjury,

six died, two killed themselves, and two paid fines for risks theyd

run.

But then there is the icosasphere

In which at last we have steel-cutting at its summit of economy,

since twenty triangles conjoined, can wrap one

ball or double-rounded shell

with almost no waste, so geometrically

neat, its an icosahedron. Would the engineers making one,

or Mr. J. O. Jackson tell us

how the Egyptians could have set up seventy-eight-foot solid gran-

ite vertically?

We should like to know how that was done.

Snow Fenceby Ted Kooser

The red fence

takes the cold trail

north; no meat

on its ribs,

but neither has it

much to carry.


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Ultima Ratio Regumby Stephen Spender

The guns spell moneys ultimate reason

In letters of lead on the spring hillside.

But the boy lying dead under the olive trees

Was too young and too sillyTo have been notable to their important eye.

He was a better target for a kiss.

When he lived, tall factory hooters never summoned him.

Nor did restaurant plate-glass doors revolve to wave him in.

His name never appeared in the papers.

The world maintained its traditional wall

Round the dead with their gold sunk deep as a well,

Whilst his life, intangible as a Stock Exchange rumour, drifted

outside.

O too lightly he threw down his cap

One day when the breeze threw petals from the trees.

The unflowering wall sprouted with guns,

Machine-gun anger quickly scythed the grasses;

Flags and leaves fell from hands and branches;

The tweed cap rotted in the nettles.

Consider his life which was valueless

In terms of employment, hotel ledgers, news files.

Consider. One bullet in ten thousand kills a man.

Ask. Was so much expenditure justified

On the death of one so young and so silly

Lying under the olive tree, O world, O death?


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Limitsby Jorge Luis Borges

Of all the streets that blur in to the sunset,

There must be one (which, I am not sure)

That I by now have walked for the last time

Without guessing it, the pawn of that Someone

Who fixes in advance omnipotent laws,

Sets up a secret and unwavering scale

for all the shadows, dreams, and forms

Woven into the texture of this life.

If there is a limit to all things and a measure

And a last time and nothing more and forgetfulness,

Who will tell us to whom in this house

We without knowing it have said farewell?

Through the dawning window night withdraws

And among the stacked books which throw

Irregular shadows on the dim table,

There must be one which I will never read.

There is in the South more than one worn gate,

With its cement urns and planted cactus,

Which is already forbidden to my entry,

Inaccessible, as in a lithograph.

There is a door you have closed forever

And some mirror is expecting you in vain;

To you the crossroads seem wide open,Yet watching you, four-faced, is a Janus.

There is among all your memories one

Which has now been lost beyond recall.

You will not be seen going down to that fountain

Neither by white sun nor by yellow moon.

You will never recapture what the Persian

Said in his language woven with birds and roses,

When, in the sunset, before the light disperses,

You wish to give words to unforgettable things.

And the steadily flowing Rhone and the lake,

All that vast yesterday over which today I bend?

They will be as lost as Carthage,

Scourged by the Romans with fire and salt.

At dawn I seem to hear the turbulent

Murmur of crowds milling and fading away;

They are all I have been loved by, forgotten by;

Space, time, and Borges now are leaving me.


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A City Without Fencesby Francine DuBois

A city without fences

smacks of the surreal,

the blind trusting

almost as incongruous

as Medeas chariot.

I am tempted to try

cars and homes, to see

if they are locked

or if the gentle folk

can cling to the faith

that people arent just

inherently good, but

almost completely

uncurious. I have no

desire to steal their TV,

but I am interested

in their family Bible,

who died when of what,

and how many generations

have been protected

from reality.

I wonder if these are

a God-fearing people

since they are not

a people-fearing people.

And I pray for the

first person to erect

a fence here, for it

will the beginning

of the end for this

unimaginable city,

and he will be forced

to wear his sin,

perhaps even on his

chest. A Home Depot

will follow him,

providing lumber

and chain link to

the scared masses,

and slowly this city

will become normal.


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66

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Wall Poem Booklet

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